Some glimpses of the inner Obama

“The Education of a President,” Peter Baker’s cover story in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, offers a few glimpses of what President Barack Obama and his top aides are thinking nearly two years after his historic election as the nation’s first black president.

Here are 10 takeaways:

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1. Some of those around the president believe he’ll face former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2012, “if they had to guess today.”

2. After this fall’s midterm elections — and the retirement of Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) — there’ll be only one Republican Obama says he can trust to talk economic issues: Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. “The two men are ideologically poles apart,” Baker wrote, “but perhaps Obama sees a bit of himself in a young, substantive policy thinker.”

3. The president wants to be more Bill Clinton than Jimmy Carter. Obama knows Clinton recovered from his party’s midterm drubbing in 1994 to win a second term two years later; Carter was a one-term president. Obama is reading “The Clinton Tapes,” Taylor Branch’s account of his secret interviews with Clinton. “I was looking over some chronicles of the Clinton years,” Obama said, “and was reminded that in ’94 — when President Clinton’s poll numbers were lower than mine, and obviously the election ended up being bad for Democrats — unemployment was only 6.6 percent. And I don’t think anybody would suggest that Bill Clinton wasn’t a good communicator or was somebody who couldn’t connect with the American people or didn’t show empathy.”

4. White House aides acknowledged they were “overconfident” when Obama was elected nearly two years ago. Now they’re cynical about whether any modern president can succeed. given the partisan gridlock and a news media obsessed with triviality and conflict. “Some White House aides who were ready to carve a new spot on Mount Rushmore for their boss two years ago privately concede now that he cannot be another Abraham Lincoln after all,” Baker wrote. “In this environment, they have increasingly concluded, it may be that every modern president is going to be, at best, average.”

5. The president has a “communication problem.” Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell gave Obama a “B-plus, A-minus on substantive accomplishments and a D-plus or C-minus on communication.” While Rendell, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, sees the economic stimulus and health care reform as enormous successes, he says Obama allowed them to be tarnished by critics. “They lost the communications battle on both major initiatives, and they lost it early,” Rendell says.

6. Sometimes, Obama can be an introvert, often finding extended contact with people outside his inner circle to be exhausting. “He can rouse a stadium of 80,000 people, but that audience is an impersonal monolith; smaller group settings can be harder for him,” Baker wrote. “Aides have learned that it can be good if he has a few moments after a big East Room event so he can gather his energy again. Unlike Clinton, who never met a rope line he did not want to work, Obama does not relish glad-handing.”

7. He’s a “closed book,” even to members of his staff. “On long Air Force One flights, he retreats to the conference room and plays spades for hours, maintaining a trash-talking contest all the while, with the same three aides: Reggie Love, his personal assistant; Marvin Nicholson, his trip director; and Pete Souza, his White House photographer,” Baker wrote. “(When I asked if he had an iPad, Obama said, ‘I have an iReggie, who has my books, my newspapers, my music all in one place.’)”

8. The president doesn’t care for the “inevitable theatrics of Washington,” according to senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. “When he emerges from the Oval Office during the day, aides say, he sometimes pauses before the split-screen television in the outer reception area, soaks in the cable chatter, then shakes his head and walks away,” Baker wrote.

9. Obama is punctual, just like his predecessor, George W. Bush. “Like Bush, he runs a pretty disciplined operation; he started our interview a half-hour ahead of schedule, just as Bush sometimes did,” Baker wrote.

10. And he likes taupe. In redecorating the Oval Office, Obama replaced Bush’s yellow sunburst carpet with and earth-tone rug, put up new tan wallpaper and swapped out a coffee table for a walnut-and-mica table. “I know Arianna [Huffington] doesn’t like it,” Obama said. “But I like taupe.”